Sarahah app: How it is helping businesses improve services

CHENNAI: Arul Murugan, founder, Snackexperts, created a personal Sarahah account and found 90% of the messages were related to his company and most of them gave constructive feedback, resulting in him having a Sarahah account in the name of the company. A week after the anonymous messaging app Sarahah went viral; companies are now beginning to leverage the app for communicating their offers or getting feedback. They feel that anonymity adds more credibility . Foreign exchange startup BookMyForex, which created its Sarahah handle a few days ago, has been getting close to 100 messages on their app.

“For me, if the feedback comes from an identified source, I tend to defend my stance or respond to the query . For instance, if I get a review on Facebook and I see him complaining constantly , I don’t take the feedback seriously . However, we tend to look at anonymous feedback more objectively and work towards improvement,” said Arul Murgan. One of the messages from a `counterpart’ read, ` I like the way you market your products and the packing’ and one more read `This is the only non-technical product that i follow,’. “The feedback is seems more constructive. Here we don’t face the issues of trolling which are high on Facebook and Twitter. It helps us improve,” said Abhinna Suresh Khare, VP Marketing, BookMyFo rex. Users of Sarahah have also been receiving promotional messages from companies like Vasanth & Co and Dr Reddy’s who have been quick to jump on the bandwagon. “I am getting messages from companies but I have no way of knowing whether it is just someone trying to spam me. Anonymity can be a disadvantage too,” said Anthony Robert, a Sarahah user.

Digital marketing experts add that the app is an interesting case for a 360 degree feedback, within a team, regardless of hierarchy . “It works with employees in a team, but even there, sometimes the inputs may be frivolous. When it co mes to seeking customer feedback, however, tracking is impossible. It is tough to set up a redressal mechanism,” said Vikas Chawla, co-founder, Social Beat. For travel company ixigo, Sarahah presented an opportunity to get people to have open conversations on travel. The company posted its Sarahah link with #travelconfessions on social media on Friday and within 6 hours, they have seen over 3,500 likes and dozens of comments. From Tinder like experiences on flight or train journeys to stealing a towel to sleep in the general class of a train and faking phone calls to make people think that they are not travelling alone, ixigo’s post has seen an interesting response.”It may be an effect of the `flavour of the season’ like Pokemon Go. But it gives us the chance to be part of a global trend, said Aashish Chopra, head-content marketing, ixigo.